Thirty steps to history

The restoration of Mumbai's Town Hall resurrects an old centre of debate and dissent

History sticks to the walls of old buildings like an invisible coat of paint. At the recently restored 183-year-old Town Hall inside the Asiatic Society Library building in Mumbai, it is piled up in heaps under the wooden floorboards.
 
This is where David Livingstone stopped over on his way from Zanzibar to London. Here stood the firebrand Irish journalist and staunch opponent of the British, Benjamin Horniman (after whom is named Horniman Circle, a small green patch across the road from the library), exhorting the crowds to rise against the state.
 
Standing on the city’s east-west axis, the Asiatic Society building is one of Mumbai’s grandest structures. The iconic flight of 30 steps that bestows the building it’s imposing and intimidating demeanour is among the most photographed and filmed sites in the city and, as Aldous Huxley remarked, makes it the only gentleman on the city’s landscape.
 
The gentleman has been through a makeover. Funds have trickled in from the state and central governments as well as a handful of public charities to peel back the layers of dust, grime and even bilious paint that many have slapped on its Doric columns and cast-iron structures.
 

The Town Hall inside the Asiatic Society, Mumbai, after and before restoration

The government says it has spent close to Rs 9 crore redoing the Town Hall that was thrown open to the public a few weeks ago. The restoration however encompasses more: it includes the Asiatic Library that is housed in the building and its priceless collection of books and documents.
 
A conservation laboratory has been set up; begun with an initial grant from the Ford Foundation, it now counts the Rotary Club and the government among its benefactors. A digitisation project is underway with a grant of Rs 5 crore from the state government. Sharad Kale, president of the Asiatic Society, says: “We will open the portal with 50,000 digitised books for our members soon.
 
Sitaram Kunte, who as the municipal commissioner was instrumental in initiating the restoration works, adds: “I want to revive the city’s intellectual capital. I want the Town Hall to acquire the significance it once had.” Kunte, now the additional secretary of higher and technical education in the Maharashtra government, wants people to claim the space as their own.
 
Built in the neo-classical style, this building is different from the Gothic style that marks the other British structures in the city. It split the then island city of Bombay into north and south, into black and white towns. The flight of steps that leads up to the Town Hall was meant to enhance its monumental character.
 

After being renovated, the hall has a neater, brighter appearance

Despite the imperial stamp on its origins, the place soon evolved into a nerve centre for the nationalist movement and later, a place for the new republic to assert its status as a young nation. Until very recently, the annual chief minister’s tea was held here; thinkers and speakers regularly presented their ideas here.
 

Restoration work on the building began in 2009. The first phase lasted till 2012, which saw the roof being extensively repaired. The next phase began in 2015 and saw the overhaul of the exteriors and the Town Hall.
 
Abha Narain Lambah, whose firm was tasked with the restoration, says her team was extremely careful dealing with a Grade I heritage structure.
 
However, despite the months she and her team spent studying images of the building and poring over the history books, they were surprised when they opened up the building. “We were taken aback by the extent of the damage the roof had undergone. And we were surprised to see the use of cast iron, which was assumed to have come to the city much later with the Watson’s hotel but this changes the timeline quite a bit,” says Lambah.
 
When it was built (1821-1833), the Town Hall cost the East India Company about £60,000. Apart from becoming a permanent residence for the Asiatic Library, the place was temporarily home to the Bombay Municipal Corporation and the Bombay University too. As the only significant structure of its times, the Town Hall was a part of almost every big event held at the time, says Kruti Garg from Abha Narain Lambah Associates.
 
Their work is not just cleaning up the structure — it means absorbing the grand history of the place and keeping the original language and character intact, she says.
 
They decided, for instance, to leave the 183-year old wooden flooring intact. When the clutter of steel cupboards and assortment of chairs and tables were removed, the flooring looked remarkably healthy. “Hence we have not changed that at all, just polished it,” Garg says. To establish the cultural language of the structure, they used old furniture that had been dumped in a small room to create new ones. To maintain the tone of a reading room, “the lighting was done so that there is never any shadow and to let people read without interruption,” says Lambah.
 
Kunte would like the Town Hall and the library to help the city reclaim its space within the intellectual capitals of the world. For that it would need to attract, as conservation and public spaces architect PK Das says, people of all ages and grow into a contemporary and welcoming destination.

History at the Town Hall
 
The year was 1923. Muhammed Ali Jinnah was a candidate from Bombay for the Legislative Assembly and was fighting on an Indian Muslim League ticket. As he made his way down the steps of the Town Hall after addressing a meeting with his friend MC Chagla (jurist, diplomat and India’s first education minister), his wife Ruttie rushed up to him with a basket of ham sandwiches. Alarmed and appalled, Jinnah remarked and his friend recalled in his memoirs: “Do you want me to lose the elections?”
 
If word had got out that Jinnah was not averse to a ham sandwich, he may well have had to bow out of public life.
 
Mahatma Gandhi’s ashes were kept here, drawing thousands of people to express their grief over his killing.
 
The country’s first ever display of electricity was held here, charming those who came to see light glow out of a bulb for the first time.
 
Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda announced at a public meeting here that he would help any deserving untouchable in his pursuit of higher studies. He was later held to his word by Dada Keluskar, teacher of a bright Dalit child who grew up to write the country’s constitution.
 

The first Indian to become a member of the library and thereby the first coloured man to enter the building was Maneckji Cursetji. He is the iconic Khada Parsi statue that stands at one of the city’s busiest junctions today, but none know his name any longer.